Former spokesperson of the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Ehsanullah Ehsan, has claimed in an audio message circulating on social media that he is no longer in the custody of Pakistani law enforcement agencies and has managed to ‘escape’.
“My name is Ehsanullah Ehsan and I was previously associated with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and Jamaatul Ahrar,” the voice in the audio clip said. He added that he had surrendered himself to the Pakistan’s intelligence agencies after reaching an agreement with them on February 5, 2017. He claimed he escaped from the custody of the institutions after they violated the agreement. He, however, didn’t share details of the agreement.
A private TV channel reported that Ehsan is currently in Turkey.
Rasool Dawar, a journalist in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, told a private TV channel that he recognizes Ehsan’s voice and that it was his voice in the audio clip.
Aqeel Yousufzai, a Peshawar-based analyst, said he has spoken to Ehsanullah Ehsan a number of times in the past. “I had spoken to him a few weeks before he surrendered himself to the security forces,” Yousufzai said. He also believed that the voice in the audio clips was of Ehsan. “I am 80 per cent sure that he is Ehsanullah Ehsan.”
Liaquat Ali, known as Ehsanullah Ehsan, belongs to Mohmand district in Pakistan’s tribal areas. He joined the TTP as a college student in 2008 and went on to become its central spokesperson.
In 2013, Ehsan parted ways with the outlawed TTP after developing differences with the group’s leadership and became Jamaatul Ahrar’s spokesperson after it was formed by Omar Khalid Khorasani in August 2014.
As a spokesperson for the TTP, Ehsan had claimed responsibility for several terrorist attacks, including the life attempt on Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai in Swat.
In April 2017, the military had confirmed that Ehsan surrendered himself to the security forces. A week later, his confessional video statement was shared with the media. In his statement, Ehsan claimed that the TTP was actually misleading the youth in the name of Islam and had links with the Indian intelligence agency. “In these nine years, I observed that TTP recruited youth by misleading them in the name of Islam. They did not follow whatever they preached. A handful of emirs who dominated TTP leadership used to receive extortion money from innocent people, massacre innocents by bomb blasts on public points, attack schools, colleges and universities… So, Islam doesn’t teach us this,” Ehsan had said at that time.
